What is a MAU (monthly active user)?
MAU (monthly active users) is the count of unique users who were active in a product during a month — each person counted once regardless of how often they showed up. It is both a health metric for products and, notably, the pricing meter for most onboarding and analytics tools: your bill scales with your traffic.
What counts as "active"
Every counter defines it slightly differently — any session, any tracked event, any SDK contact. For metering purposes, an onboarding tool typically counts each unique user its snippet saw that month: identified users deduplicated by ID, anonymous visitors approximated per browser. The definition matters when comparing bills; two tools can meter the same product to different MAU counts.
MAU as a pricing meter
Most tools in the onboarding category price by MAU tiers, which makes the per-MAU arithmetic the honest comparison: entry price divided by included volume. The spread is dramatic — published entry tiers in this category run from under a cent to fifteen cents per MAU — and entry prices flatter tools with tiny included volumes. Always compute at your own volume, and at 3× it; the cost comparison does the math across vendors.
MAU as a health metric
As a product metric, MAU is a blunt instrument — it counts presence, not value, and one login a month qualifies. Pair it with activation and retention for meaning: MAU says how many showed up; those two say whether showing up mattered. The DAU/MAU ratio (daily over monthly actives) adds a frequency read — how much of the audience is habitual.
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